After two months of political tensions that boiled over into street riots, Hungary now awaits a winter truce, but tempers could flare in spring over government austerity measures, analysts said.
A referendum, initiated by the main conservative opposition Fidesz party, is planned for spring on the Socialist-Liberal government's economic reforms, which include ending free public university education and raising individual healthcare contributions.
These reforms, aimed at overhauling wasteful public services, come on top of tax increases, energy price subsidy cuts, and mass public sector layoffs.
Local press reports have speculated that the price of gas could go up by as much as 70 percent for some consumers.
The government is scrambling to raise revenues and cut the highest public deficit in the EU, projected at 10.1 percent of GDP this year.
"[Spring] will be the time of labor unions, which are relatively weak, of protests and strikes after people come to terms with what awaits them with these neo-liberal [austerity] measures," sociologist Miklos Gaspar Tamas said.
In September, Budapest was rocked by street riots after the leak of a recording in which Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany is heard saying the government lied to voters about the state of the economy in order to win re-election in April.
Fidesz leader Viktor Orban, who lost the past two parliamentary elections, has said the riots were caused by outrage over Gyurcsany's false promises of tax cuts and society's rejection of the austerity measures.
The government, however, has said it was Orban who sparked riots with his inflammatory anti-government rhetoric, which galvanized violent far-right extremists who rampaged in the streets of Budapest on three nights in September.
Orban rode the wave of violence in a bid to oust Gyurcsany, organizing daily street demonstrations until Oct. 23, when riots erupted again on the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising against Soviet rule.
Unfazed, Gyurcsany has pledged to stay on. He was strengthened after winning a vote of confidence in parliament early last month and by the fizzling out of anti-government demonstrations as cold weather set in.
"With the arrival of the winter, there will likely be a pause" in protests, said Peter Balazs, professor at Corvinus University in Budapest.
Fidesz still refuses to talk with Gyurcsany -- walking out of parliament each time the prime minister rises to speak -- but the main opposition party has backed down from calls for street protests.
One analyst said the economic challenges facing the country and the planned referendum, which still must be approved by the national electoral commission, could force the two main political parties to cooperate in the future.
"[The referendum] could build bridges by triggering a more rational discussion on the reform of pensions, social security and state administration," said Istvan Stumpf, a former minister under Orban and now an analyst at Szazadveg Foundation.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS